Short film program “Intervention”

Where Russia Ends
Tam, de zakinchuyetʹsya Rosiya

In 1980, an expedition from Ukraine was sent to report on the far corners of Siberia. In February 2022, when Russia started hostilities in Ukraine, forgotten footage was discovered in the Kyiv Science Film Studio. It is a timely reminder of Russia’s overwhelming possessive power, which is taking everything beautiful and alive with it like a hurricane. The imperialist expansion of the country, which attempts to cover itself with ‘voluntary accession’, has been going on all along, and the methods have not changed. So, too, is the destruction of nature and the oppression and exploitation of indigenous communities (Evenk, Buryat, Yakut and others).

Oleksiy Radynski

Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. His films have been screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Docudays, Krakow IFF, Sheffield Doc Fest, DocAviv, Docs Against Gravity, DOK Leipzig, among others, and received a number of festival awards. Since 2010, he was a columnist at Political Critique (Krytyka Polityczna), and between 2011 and 2014 he worked as an editor of Ukrainian edition of Political Critique magazine.

Project
Projekt

In 1973, a Serbian company is chosen to build an international trade fair complex in Lagos, Nigeria. Opened in 1977, the complex does not survive the country’s recession and officially closes its doors after ten years of operation. A grand ambition becomes part of everyday life. The wildlife that has grown up is trying to reclaim its territory from the abandoned building, and the locals are taking over the space, setting up a carpentry workshop and a bicycle repair shop. And for the children, it’s a giant playground.

Dane Komljen

He made three feature films and numerous shorts exploring notions of body, space, utopia and being together. His films were awarded at Festival del Film Locarno, IFF Rotterdam, Festival de Cannes and others. His work has been in art museums and other events.

Silt

In 2012, a field in Likančiai suddenly flooded. Resembling a lake at first sight, this body of water is the result of a blocked drainage ditch. Land reclamation in Lithuania was carried out rapidly during the Soviet era in order to adapt the conditions for agriculture. Most of the ditches were left unmaintained, the flow of water was disrupted and, decades after independence, is still changing the landscape. In Dumblas, a film by Ona Julia Luka Steponaitytė, Iida Jonsson and Ssi Saarinen, the reservoir is explored from perspectives more suited to emergency situations: first-person POV, exploratory diving and helicopter flight. The soundtrack, composed by Alexander Iezzi, acts as another landscape that does not dwell on a particular rhythm or harmony.

Ssi Saarinen, Ona Julija Lukas Steponaitytė, Iida Jonsson

Artists Jonsson (Oslo, Norway), Steponaitytė (Vilnius, Lithuania) and Saarinen (Turku, Finland) are a collective living between Vilnius and Berlin. They graduated from Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and their work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, KIN Museum in Kiruna, Sweden and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. The music for „Silt“ was composed by Alexander Iezzi (Tucson, Arizona), whose work has been exhibited at KW Berlin, MoMA New York and Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin. Together with composer Billy Bultheel, Iezzi works under the pseudonym 33.